Democracy Gone Astray

Democracy, being a human construct, needs to be thought of as directionality rather than an object. As such, to understand it requires not so much a description of existing structures and/or other related phenomena but a declaration of intentionality.
This blog aims at creating labeled lists of published infringements of such intentionality, of points in time where democracy strays from its intended directionality. In addition to outright infringements, this blog also collects important contemporary information and/or discussions that impact our socio-political landscape.

All the posts here were published in the electronic media – main-stream as well as fringe, and maintain links to the original texts.

[NOTE: Due to changes I haven't caught on time in the blogging software, all of the 'Original Article' links were nullified between September 11, 2012 and December 11, 2012. My apologies.]

Monday, December 10, 2012

The Harper government’s version of reality is falling to pieces

There comes a point in the politics of deception where the BS hits the bridge abutment and everything goes through the windshield.

The government is still at a distance from the moment of impact, but the tires on the Harper machine are beginning to squeal.

Another omnibus bill has been jammed down the country’s throat. Elections Canada is investigating vote-suppression claims in 56 out of 308 federal ridings across the country. The entire Senate is about to be audited. The arse is out of basic parliamentary practice. Last week, proceedings in the House of Commons veered toward a parking lot rumble. The government continues to operate like the Skull and Bones Society. Another group is now taking the Harper government to court because it can’t get information — the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

The process of drifting into the wall is advancing on all fronts. Take Chris Alexander on CBC television this week — shredding his last vestige of credibility by again playing the wind-up communications doll for PMO spin.

Alexander has come a long way, most of it downhill, since the Globe and Mail’s March 2011 gift to him before the federal election of that year, a profile so benign it conjured up images of breast-milk and cooing. Alexander went on to win the federal riding of Ajax-Pickering. Since then he’s made his living shilling on the tube for government policies, good and bad, including the corrupt F-35 program.

What else do you call it in a democracy when every facet of the government — save one, the Parliamentary Budget Office — knowingly and repeatedly understated the true costs of a publicly funded program by billions of dollars? An accounting error? Yeah, the kind Enron’s accountants made.

Alexander’s performance was humiliation in hot pursuit of farce. It showed just how much Dear Leader has lopped off this young man’s stature since he traded the world of diplomacy for the sea-worm tank of Harper politics. Pretty soon he and Pierre Poilievre, another robot controlled by the PMO’s communications joystick, will have to stand on chairs to be seen. Here’s what Alexander told a national TV audience about the F-35.

“Let’s be clear. We have had a plan since April of this year that involves seven points, that involves freezing any spending on replacing the CF-18s … and that has an option analysis that is going to look at all the aircraft … We have been saying this for months now … We haven’t yet taken a final decision on what aircraft replaces the CF-18s. There is more than one aircraft that has been in the running. We’re getting an aircraft that can do the job — but also one that represents value for taxpayers money.”

Let’s be clear, Chris. Everyone knows by now that the words “let’s be clear”, when used by a member of the government, are routinely followed by things that are opaque, uncheckable or untrue, but always straight from the Boss’s office. Whose office they came from before that is anyone’s guess.

Despite six on-the-record comments from the prime minister himself stating there was a contract to buy these budget-wrecking, flying pianos, despite explicit House of Commons references by Defence Minister Peter MacKay to “the actual contract” Canada signed to acquire 65 jets for $9 billion, there was Alexander spouting the PMO’s on-demand version of reality. It doesn’t square with any known facts, as Andrew Coyne has so forcefully reminded everyone.

No wonder Alexander was holding his coffee mug with both hands. You tend to shake when you make stuff up. When will these ambitious mouthpieces of an authoritarian government realize that reputations completely vanish in the quicksand of phoney talking points? A date with Hannah Thibedeau is one thing — a date with the voters is quite another.

As self-immolation goes, I prefer Julian Fantino’s unblinking ‘FU-35′ knee-wobbler, offered six months after the Conservatives won a majority government:

“There’s a plan A, there’s a plan B, there’s a plan C, there’s a plan Z and they’re all F-35s.”

You want to talk about squealing tires? How about the way the PM sold Canada down the Yangtze River? When most people were thinking about stocking stuffers and finding the eggnog recipe, the PM finessed the $15 billion Nexen deal with Communist China through the system late on a Friday afternoon. Think of it as viewer suppression.

Harper really should have hired Rick Mercer to stand in for him. Here’s the joke: at a press conference where he claimed to be worried about state-backed takeovers of Canadian companies (some news agencies actually reported his promise of tougher regulations for foreign investment as the real story), he approved the largest such deal in our history.

Almost everyone in the country, Nexen shareholders excluded, is choking on yet another trade deal that never got scrutinized in Parliament and that the majority of Canadians oppose. Why can’t a Canadian company conduct the business of developing Canadian resources? Free enterprise, you say? So Communists are better at it?

The PM’s own backbench gets it. As I have mentioned before, this is what Conservative MP James Bezan wrote to a constituent back in Manitoba before the Nexen deal was approved:

“I would like to note that I am strongly opposed to this deal, and I have raised my concerns directly with cabinet as well as with the prime minister. As I have stated to my colleagues in cabinet, due to China’s dismal record on human rights and freedoms, I take particular exception to allowing a state-owned company from China to purchase a Canadian company. The Communist Chinese government continues to fail to grant even the most basic of human freedoms to its citizens, as they strip away their national wealth to invest around the world. CNOOC’s past possible human rights abuses and failure to report oil spills is something I am also very concerned about …

“As a Conservative, I am in favour of keeping markets open in Canada, however I do not support allowing state-owned and state-controlled enterprises to take over publicly traded Canadian companies, as these state-owned and controlled business (sic) are not on the same level playing field as other free-enterprising corporate entities. Markets should operate in a manner that allow (sic) for fair and proper investment. State control, through financial manipulation and investment, do (sic) not allow for openness or fairness to the average investor. Large amounts of state investment distort markets for all other participants, while limiting other opportunities.”

You have to admit, the chair of the Standing Committee on Defence has a point, even if he’s not prepared to fight for it. Isn’t China the country where there is no independent judiciary, where religious repression is routine, where arbitrary detention and extra-judicial killings are commonplace, where torture is a normal state tool, where Liu Xiaobo is looking at 15 years in prison for circulating a pro-democracy pamphlet, where websites are censored and blocked, and where they slaughtered their own students in Tiananmen Square?

Isn’t that why Stephen Harper once said that he would never sacrifice human rights and Canadian values for the “almighty dollar”, the way he accused the Liberals of doing?

Perhaps the almighty yuan is another matter. When the prime minister went to China on one of his crucial trips, he didn’t take people like Grand Council Chief Patrick Madahbee with him — a man who has a keen interest in human rights violations, right here at home involving First Nations people.

Instead, Stephen Harper took Patrick Daniel, then CEO of Enbridge Inc. (the pipeline company that wants to build Northern Gateway), and 37 other corporate executives. Mr. Harper’s government was, after all, busily negotiating all those Foreign Investment Protection Agreements that give countries like China huge powers.

One of those powers is the right to sue the Canadian government for imposing domestic laws that have a negative impact on Chinese investments here. Since these agreements, like the Comprehensive Economic Trade Agreement with Europe, are all worked out in secret, the only people who know what’s going on are the ones who travel with the Boss.

And now Industry Minister Christian Paradis says since he can’t talk about a commercial deal, the Chinese will have to explain the benefits to Canadians of the Nexen sale.

Do you ever get the feeling that the real poker game isn’t in Parliament anymore?

Original Article
Source: ipolitics
Author: Michael Harris

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